Cleanup after inlay, and final blank sizing

After the glue has dried, the core blank has to be cleaned up quite a bit. The excess glue must be scraped away, and the blank has to be smoothed completely on both sides using a planer. In order to get a good first pass out of the planer, any high spots on the ash and PTEX need to be shaved down by hand with a block plane. Once the blank is finished in the planer, the base side is pretty much finished. No further smoothing is done on it, and it must be perfectly flat. I take great care to keep the planer in good working order, and I make sure the final passes on the base side are light. This gives me a high quality finish.

I love the way our blanks look at this stage. They’re perfectly smooth, and the PTEX and 2cm ash along the effective edge is perfectly smooth. It’s usually at this point that I get sad that the beauty of these cores is obscured in the final product.

After this step, the blank is still thicker than the final thickness of the board. The thickness profile will be applied by the CNC machine in a later step.

The planer I use is a JET 15” planer, which is wide enough to accommodate the width of a snowboard core blank. You could use a smaller planer if you’re making skis.